CIISA- ERIDGE PARK

DISCLAIMER : With each recording I took I asked the land before I pressed play and I gave gratitude and said thank you after I need the recordings. I also took a few minuets with the landscape before I started recordings to acclimatise myself with the space and see what I could hear sonically to try to understand the space. With each area I left offerings of flowers that I had picked earlier those days to give something back to the land that allowed me to record it.

Eridge is an SSSI location meaning it is a site of specific scientific interest. The soil here is mainly clay and sandstone.

I took these recordings in Eridge park towards the end of March. The ground here is mainly made out of clay. I was curious as to how much activity would be happening in this kind of terrain. Eridge Deer Park is a location that I frequently use in my work as it is one of the last ancient deep parks in England. It is also most famous for being on of the only deer parks with the most types of lichen and moss in England, leading it to be an incredibly interesting site of ecological interest. When I was taking these recordings I found that the ground was very hard and dry as it had been hot and sunny in the area for the past few weeks. The site is also private so the area I recorded in has primarily been untouched by and agricultural or human use. From taking my first recordings in my garden at my house in London I expected to hear silence but in fact I heard a lot of activity. In these following recordings I have taken a Geofon recording and a field recordings of each area of the park. I found that I would hear more from the soil is I placed the Geofon in the sunshine and also if I were to place it close to running water. I wanted to take both the Geofon and field recordings so I could get a better understanding on what goes on above and below ground and how much the two differ. It’s interesting o discover how we perceive something as sounding busy. Due to the Geofon recordings not producing and overwhelming amount of sound unlike a normal field recording, it enabled me to tune my ears more finely to the smallest of noises. As I was taking the recordings I was with a friend, when I would tell him that I can hear activity in the ground and would pass the headphones to him he said that he couldn’t hear anything. I think this is an interesting thought, what do we perceive as ‘a lot of sound’ or what are the things that we can’t hear because we don’t know how to listen correctly?

This is an image of Eridge Park where I started recordings to the left and made my way over to the right of this image.

I took these recording around the area shown above, it was quite close to a flowing river so I was intrigued as to how it would sound.

I took these recordings on my way up to Coronation Plantation (a plantation of trees planted when the queen was coronated).

Due to it being so windy in the spot, I started to hear it effecting the underground recording (although thus was interesting)

Here is a field recording of Coronation Plantation.

My evaluation from listing to all of these recordings was that there wasn’t an incredible amount of soil activity, perhaps this is due to the soil being more of a clay substance. I was still very intrigue into what I heard as this site has been of great interest to me over the years and I have taken copious amounts of field recordings so it was really intriguing to be able to hear below ground this time. As this is my first attempt at listening to the soiling am exited to see how the soil from my other site will be different. I will properly evaluate all of the recordings once I have visited to other sites and give a more in depth debrief of my sonic experiences with these soils.

This is a combination of all of the recordings I took in the park

I was then curious to hear what the difference between my aunties garden which is gardened every day to untouched areas on the park would be. I found that I could hears so much more activity in my aunties garden. This to me makes complete sense. Firstly the soil quality is very different one is clay and the other is very healthy and nourished soil. The soil from my aunties garden I presumed would also have far more worm activity which is audible in these clips due to the treatment of the soil.

Here is a combination of all 5 recordings to enable you to hear all of the activity from each corner of the garden. I took these recordings in the actually exposed soil patches and then others on the grassier bit besides the beds.